


A Choice

by Allothi



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Gen, female character POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-10
Updated: 2009-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:08:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allothi/pseuds/Allothi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morgana Finds Out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Choice

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the hiatus between seasons one and two. Now thoroughly jossed!
> 
> Huge thanks to the ever-patient stealingpennies for beta.
> 
> Warnings: death of a canon character (not one of the ot4), angry Morgana.

Morgana looked out across the castle courtyard -- new hurts on her mind, an ache in her head and the late-morning sunlight stinging in her eyes -- and considered how likely it was that she might yet forgive what had been done to her. It seemed rather doubtful. Here and now, forgiveness seemed a remote, unrealistic concept.

Of course, a person might parrot, _forgive, forget_, easily enough: they frequently did. And then sometimes people forgot, with age, or with infirmity, or at times of their own will. But they did not forgive. Not faced with anything that seriously called for forgiveness. Even Gwen, Morgana thought, whatever Gwen herself might insist -- even Gwen still had a small, strong fire of anger against Uther. The evidence was there in the light in her face, whenever Gwen spoke of the good king Arthur would one day become: the day his father who killed Gwen's father would finally have died. Even Gwen, however sweet, however generous, however willing to do good -- even she held tight to her grudges.

Amidst the milling of people below, Morgana caught a glimpse of a too-familiar figure -- tall, lanky; dark hair short and unruly; face narrow; a certain walk and a certain slack hold of the shoulders -- Morgana turned away and let the outside be. Within, naturally, her chamber was in perfect order. Everything smoothed down and fixed to a precision of beauty. Bed neat as if Morgana hadn't slept at all. The most wonderful illusion: as if the dark pains of Morgana's tossing and tangling in the sheets all night through had never been.

Mind trained by the years of taking Gaius' concoctions, she still found the surface of her bedside cabinet empty without any vial or slender glass bottle. She had told the new physician that her nightmares had stopped, determined to know what difference the drug had been making. (She felt a painful near-disappointment in the fact that so far, she had observed no change whatsoever. The foul-tasting stuff hadn't even been hurting her.) The physician had probably frowned as she spoke, taking in the dark circles beneath her eyes, or the paleness of her skin, but if he doubted her, he had lacked the nerve to say. And Gwen had only murmured to _be careful_.

"It's worth knowing," Morgana had pointed out.

That was eight days ago, and then, somehow, things had still not seemed quite so bad. _Bad_, even then, but the more days passed without a change, the longer life went on in this new, shifted shape, the worse it all felt.

There was a vase on the table near the centre of the room, filled with colourless flowers. Gwen had brought it -- Gwen had brought only white flowers for every day of the ten since Gaius' death. Morgana bristled at the solemn propriety of it. Gwen, apparently, preferred respect for a liar's corpse to any share in Morgana's nasty, troublesome anger. Morgana thought, Gwen had always had a quiet, stubborn refusal to think badly of people. Regardless of how much they had deserved it. Gwen mistook this willing blindness for morality.

Every morning, Gwen helped Morgana up, went off about the castle and the town upon the first of her duties, and then returned, mid-morning, as she always had, with her flowers -- and now, every morning, on seeing that the flowers were still white, Morgana thought about picking a fight. She thought, she knew Gwen well enough that, with a bit of work, she could probably push her to it. She could make her really, undisguisedly angry. But then -- the thought of being fully at odds with Gwen as well as everyone else, the thought of the pain of it, was always enough to hold Morgana back.

Today, perfectly tuned with the slow worsening of Morgana's mood, Gwen had made things particularly difficult. She had set the flowers in their vase -- tiny, pale, oversensitively white -- adjusted, arranged, bent to inhale the scant fragrance that was all these flowers had, and she had said, "Um," -- which was Morgana's warning.

"Um," Gwen said. "Um, Merlin -- he hopes that you're well."

"Oh," Morgana said, with purposeful coldness. A failed warning.

"Yes, he--" Gwen began.

"Does he?" Morgana said.

And Gwen looked very serious. "Yes," she said. "He does." She gathered herself up -- so it seemed -- and fixed her gaze, straight and unwavering, in a way that Morgana knew meant straight beyond Morgana herself, over her shoulder at the cold stone of the wall. A poor fakery of eye contact. Morgana knew, too, that it meant Gwen had a _something important_ she felt compelled to say, to which Morgana would have no interest in listening.

"Let's not talk about Merlin," Morgana tried. There was something there that appealed to her, some sharp pleasure in the futility of the attempt.

"_No_," Gwen said. Predictably. "I-- He didn't mean to do wrong. I need to make sure that you know that. He's a _good person_." What a dreadful, overused phrase.

"I understand," Gwen added, as Morgana raised her brows. "I do understand. _Morgana_, I know that-- the way they--" Gwen shook her head. "But he never meant to hurt you." And what a trivialising way to speak of it all. Morgana gritted her teeth.

"Let's really not talk about this, Gwen."

"He means well," Gwen said, still forging ahead. "He's always meant well. You must know that, I know that you--"

"_Gwen_." Morgana cut her off. It seemed merciful: to herself, at very least.

Gwen stopped. Thank god.

"I don't care," Morgana said, speaking slowly, "what he meant, or what he intended."

"You--"

"Nothing alters what -- the two of them -- the way they behaved. And it's what they _did_, the way they lied to me, deceived me -- that's what I care about. Not -- _apologies_. Only what's real."

"You-- oh," Gwen said, speaking low and deep. Something changed about her face, a strange softness of worry and upset that Morgana found she rather hated. "I, um," Gwen said. "I know you won't turn him in, though." She didn't ask it as a question, but of course, if Gwen needed to say it, it had to be one. "I know you won't. For -- well. For what he is."

It took some time for Morgana to convince herself, remind herself that she wasn't going to fight with Gwen -- not with _Gwen_. She was _keeping_ Gwen. Morgana bit down on the inside of her cheek, and the silence bled.

"I know you won't," Gwen added, eventually -- as if she simply couldn't resist making certain her doubts were plain.

"He'd turn me in right back," Morgana said, and made the words sound light.

"He _wouldn't_." The great weight of faith and trust in Gwen's voice made Morgana's stomach turn.

She crossed the room and stood next to Gwen, still facing the opposite way -- on the edge of her vision she saw Gwen turn her head to see Morgana's face. Morgana looked at the vase. At the new flowers, pretty and light. She turned over the thought of knocking them to the floor: the way the water would spread across the stone, and the way the flowers themselves would scatter and break.

"I don't know if you're right," Morgana said. Though Gwen probably was, at that. Infuriatingly, Merlin just wasn't the turn-you-in sort. Morgana touched the vase at its neck with just one finger, and she left it standing -- destruction in potentia. "But I'll leave him be," she said. "For you, I won't even try to murder him in his sleep." She turned a flippant smile. Then it failed and fell, the corners of her mouth tugging down.

Morgana turned in time to see Gwen nod -- so low it was almost a bow. Morgana sighed.

"Gwen," she said. Gwen looked up. "You may go," Morgana said, and Gwen did -- quiet, self-contained.

Morgana remembered that she had watched the careful way Gwen closed the door behind her -- just the slightest sound as it fitted, flush, into its frame -- and wished, for a moment, that Gwen were different.

 

Now, Morgana paced her room in frustration and thought, _I'm hardening over_. She hoped she was, she thought she was -- she wanted to know it, with a certainty. She thought, she would need to be. Not that she had ever been soft. But what she wanted now was different -- far harder still. Like the difference between silver and steel.

Her mind turned restlessly to the thought of Arthur, here in this room, nine days before. That strange, hollow sound in his voice as he spoke:

"You really are a--" He had shaken his head, unable to say it. He had curved his fingers, crawlingly slow, to a fist. "You're one of them. _Like that_. You and Merlin both."

"Apparently." She felt the almost-lie in the _complete_ ignorance this suggested; it was so simple that she liked it. "Though I'm not like Merlin."

"Between you, you've both made me a traitor."

Well. And what could she have said to that? She settled on:

"You could not be. If that's what your conscience demands." She had managed just the right razor-blade careless tone.

He shook his head again and stayed a while, saying nothing in ponderous style -- dwelling, no doubt, on his non-dilemma. If he had really had thoughts of saying something to his father, Morgana thought, he would not have been there, in that way, speaking with her thus. Eventually, after his silence, he left.

 

Morgana went to her dresser, sick of thought, and found a hair ribbon, with which she tied the hated flowers together in a bunch. She stepped out briskly and found a maid.

"Give these to the tailors wife." She handed them over. "Send her my commiserations -- _yes_, again -- on the death of her mother. And bring me something better for my room. I feel like something red, today."

The girl bobbed a curtsey, flowers wavering. "Yes, my lady." And she flitted off, cheerful and ignorant, to do as she was bid. Obedient, unthinking, gracelessly girlish -- unGwen.

Morgana returned to her room, where she took out her books and resolutely did not pace as she awaited her better, brighter flowers. Sat at her table, the empty vase was directly before her, and she could see a little way in. The sight was unpleasant: a few bruised fragments of stem floated in still and clouded-looking water. Morgana moved the thing to her dressed, set it down hard, disliked the bang it made and went back to her seat.

The girl, when she returned, came bringing field poppies, round and gaudily cheerful. And behind her: Merlin. Who still -- damned child -- had a thousand unhidden traces of grief about his face. He was as pale and shadowed-eyed as Morgana supposed she must be. She could of course acknowledge his loss: beneath, even twisting into her anger, blackened and malformed, still, she shared in that loss. She had known Gaius for years -- and years longer than Merlin had. She had trusted him.

She couldn't like the sight of Merlin's face. His grief, like a call to her own, a demand for her sympathy. But however much pain he was in -- she was glad of it.

As even as she could manage, Morgana thanked the girl, and told both servants -- her anger blazing up inside her to fierier and fierier life -- "You may go."

The maid went; Merlin, of course, did not. Instead he watched the maid disappear down the corridor, and then closed the door, himself still very much _inside_ the room.

Morgana took in his face, the way he so clearly hoped to apologise and be done -- and she wished she had a sword in her hand. There was one hung at the wall behind her changing screen; and a dagger, her favourite secret, beneath one pillow on the bed. She supposed in fact neither would do much good. His kind of magic -- she should have got _that_.

"Morgana," he began.

At his voice she felt too furious to speak. All she could think of was how he had deceived her -- he and Gaius both.

They had discussed her between themselves, she knew -- they watched her, watched over her, and watched her madden herself with uncertainty. They had observed her, a scientific specimen: she had seen Gaius' notes. She had found the book the same hour it all came out. And from time to time, they had deceived her.

They cut away, just now and again, the young, green shoots of faith in her dreams, in herself, she had continually begun to grow. Sophia -- that had been the first time. Morgana could remember so clearly, and felt such a damned fool, looking back -- Gaius had brought her almost every step of the way to a certain, certain faith in what she was, only to break it off, like a knife-slice, with a single lie.

No, they had told her, Arthur hadn't almost drowned, almost died. You were nowhere near to losing him. He had tried to elope with a pretty girl -- such foolish youth -- and been hit on the head the way he needed.

Morgana had thought, she had deluded herself. So desperate to believe she was sane -- that there was some reason her dreams seemed so much like life to her -- she would even imagine she saw the future. Crazed, nightmare-addled Morgana. Even now, she could not quite bring herself to imagine what they -- what Gaius and Merlin -- must have thought, must have said of her.

"Morgana," Merlin said, and she wished she knew a way to hurt him.

"_Leave_," she said. "Get out!" She breathed. "_Now_. As ordered."

"_No_," he said -- which had been said far too much to her this day -- and Morgana's rage overbrimmed.

She took three swift steps across to him and lost all care for anything but this moment. She felt the feel of her fist punching anger-hard into his stomach, immensely satisfying, and took in the sight of him crumpling back. He almost fell, but not quite; and he gasped for breath, which she savoured as the moment faded away.

"Okay," he said. His gasping diminished. He tried to straighten, though he was still having trouble. "Um. Ow." And then -- the most horrific absurdity -- he smiled at her, warm and genuine. "I deserved that," he said.

She would have punched him again, but for its patent futility. He was _beaming_. He was like some monstrous creature, she thought, some dread, beastlike, malefic, wolflike thing: but in his own mind, he was a puppy. He barely knew the things he'd done.

He said, "I wanted to apologise," and he looked over to her where she'd stepped away, looked into her face easily, damn well _wanting_ her friendship. "Um," he said. "Um, yeah, I know: another apology. I know you're angry. Gwen says-- But we _are_ on the same side. Right? You know that, you know-- we have to be."

They weren't, Morgana thought. They certainly didn't have to be. She thought again of her sword, of the blade of it, the way it could cut into a person's skin.

"You haven't been on mine." In the depths of her voice, she heard a tiny shake. Something from the overload of her emotion.

And Merlin -- Merlin looked at her as if he just couldn't see what she meant. He rubbed at his hair, and looked indecisive.

Morgana took advantage of the moment. "Now go," she said. "Go _now_, before I break a promise and try to kill you." She knew the emptiness of the threat -- she understood it -- but for the brief time of her speaking, she still felt like it was true. And it worked.

"We'll speak again, I'll -- I'll come again," was all Merlin said. And then: "I'm sorry." He ducked his head and left.

She waited until he was definitely gone, then rubbed the tender soreness on her knuckles. She tried to feel sane.

She stepped back in careful, time-dragging steps, away from her fury: she looked over it, measured it, took -- slowly -- its dimensions and tried to contain it. To gather it up, compact it and parcel it away. For whenever it might be useful. She did her best to feel that she was rational.

He hadn't closed the door, she realised -- as she took back in her surroundings, the breathing world. She closed it herself, and turned the lock. She looked at her flowers. Bright red, which she knew that she liked.

She went and picked up her sword, and for a while, she held it, held out in her hand. She felt the weight of it, like something audial, hearable, a comforting, battle-worn, lullaby hum: and she tasted, like hot red wine, the perfect, immortal-feeling fit of it into her hand.

Another knock at the door. Morgana set down her sword and, feeling her foolishness, unlocked the lock so she could open the door and let in the maid with her lunch. No Gwen -- Morgana supposed Gwen must have decided it would be better to keep her distance.

The maid left, and Morgana considered through, three times, relocking the door. She chose not to. It was a toy of a thing, in any case. One good blow, and it would break. She didn't need locks.

She went over her thoughts, her plans. She checked the time and considered how much longer she had to act -- if it _was_ to be today that she would finally do what had been in her mind to do all through these last ten days. The thought was so thought-through that by now, it felt centuries-old. Like a great oak, strong and tall, that had lived through all the hardest weather and still stood, unbent and unbeaten, whispering its leaves and filtering the light to the ground below. Morgana thought that now, she felt sure of herself.

 

Like all the worst moments of Morgana's life, Gaius' death, and what followed, had happened in the depths of the night. She had woken with a start and a gasp, and only the feeling of something dreadfully wrong -- a shadow-pain behind her eyes and right down the back of her neck through her spine, nauseating, dense magic shuddering through the pitch-black dark. Mindlessly, she took up her dagger -- she checked round her: no danger _in_ the room -- and she shook Gwen awake and dragged her out of bed and out, holding to her wrist, through the castle. They half-crashed into Arthur in the corridors: in his nightshirt and boots, sword in hand. He touched Morgana's shoulder and held her still.

"There's someone in the castle."

"I know," she said. "This way."

At the time, he didn't ask how she knew. Not in that urgent, fearful moment. And later, he barely bothered with the question.

Crashing open the infirmary door, stumbling through, dagger ready in her hand -- at first, Morgana only saw Merlin, knelt down on the floor, bent over something. Then she saw the something: Gaius' body, still, and the spreading dark-red stain of his blood. Then Arthur brushed past her to the _other_ body, which was slumped back against the thick wood of Gaius' workbench -- the bench upended, smashed vials, ten thousand shining shatterings of glass and a mess of spattered liquids all about. There was no wound on the woman's body, and no sign of death but that she did not move, but even as Arthur held his sword's point to her chest, Morgana knew that the body was a corpse. She could still feel the echoes of the death spell. And she half-knew, even then, who must have cast it.

Merlin lifted his head, his eyes wet and his skin white with rage and grief. He looked about them, and fixed his eyes upon Morgana. And she shivered with what was, for once, an entirely earthly, human sense of premonition. There was something wild, the fading traces of the killer in Merlin's face, and in the choke of his voice when he spoke:

"You _knew_." And he stood, and Morgana saw that the whole of him was shaking. "If you foresaw this--" He held out his hand, palm flat towards her, and the threat was there in his eyes, a real, terrible yellow light. "And even if you didn't-- then what use are you?" He sucked back a sob, and a kind of blackness filled Morgana's brain. He seemed to shout louder than anything she'd ever heard: "What _use_ is a Seer of you couldn't stop _this_?"

Gwen held Morgana's hand in hers, gentle but firm, just right, just perfect, as it all came out. Two secrets, both kept by Merlin and Gaius: Merlin's own, and, kept from Morgana herself, _her_ secret. Oddly, as it was told, Morgana didn't think she needed comfort, didn't need assurance that Gwen was still on her side. For some while, numbed down, she felt that everything would be all right.

Morgana herself stabbed into the dead woman's chest with her dagger. She did it early, the corpse still fresh enough to bleed well -- and besides, Morgana had correctly reasoned out, no one would think or care to inspect the body.

The woman's motive -- Merlin spat it out -- was "some kind of grudge." Some twenty years before, Gaius had known the woman's parents were harbouring sorcerers, and had handed them over to Uther and to their deaths. Morgana listened, and wiped clean her dagger, and brushed to the back of her mind a dark, staining sense of guilt.

The anger came only later, as she thought things over, then over, then over again -- even reading what Gaius had written of her, she had understood it all only very slowly. They had kept herself from herself. Lying in bed, the first, weak rays of the light before dawn just beginning to be visible, she fed and grew her rage and felt all the power Gaius had held over her, that she had never known. She was kept sleepless, all through an unsteady day and into the following night, her mind turning about the viscera-deep, unfillable need to take something back.

 

Now -- now a little closer to eleven than ten days since Gaius' escape into death -- now, the afternoon drawing to a close, Morgana looked out again upon all the life and activity below, in the courtyard, and she thought briefly of remaining as she was. Unpleasant flowers, painful, near-useless dreams, fear and secrecy. Some uneasy alliance with Merlin -- waiting and protecting Arthur for whenever in the far-distant future he might be king. She would be a background creature, risking -- risking less than she might -- and gaining little.

The sun began to draw low. Morgana felt her conviction grow more clear as it did, and fit better and better into place in her thoughts. She made her way down, towards the lesser hall where she knew she would find Uther alone, at his evening meal.

His was not the _right_ side -- not the moral right -- of course, she knew. She thought, neither was Merlin's. And at least this way, at least like this, she might snatch up some power of her own. She wouldn't be anyone's dupe, and she would not be in hiding, in confusion and fear, any longer.

At the door, she hesitated. She knew the danger. But she felt a kind of certainty that her death, at very least, was many decades into the future. She felt that she knew it: and, she now knew, if anyone could, she _would_. And besides, though she'd now felt the force of his quick, wild fits of rage many times, she still felt sure -- as sure as anyone could be of such things -- she still felt sure of Uther's deep, abiding care for her. And he could use a Seer on his side.

She opened the door, closed it behind her, went to him -- she knelt to him as her king as she had never done, before now. She spoke. And she hoped against hope.


End file.
